Many organizations today employ various types of voice communications systems, such as PSTN (public switched telephone network) in the form of analog fixed telecom, digital fixed telecom and more recently Voice over IP (VoIP), Mobile VoIP (MVoIP), GSM (Global System for Mobile communications), UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System), etc.
Employees and other users of voice communications systems may use different terminals to access the various systems. Some terminals offer multi-mode voice communications system access and may be used to access services on more than one voice communication system concurrently. For example, some mobile devices support both mobile VoIP and GSM services, with each service exposed as a different telephone number.
For organizations utilizing several types of voice communication systems, it would be desirable to have access to an integrated switchboard system that provides information about all types of voice communications devices, regardless of their underlying communications protocols.